Shaun Deeb created a thread this past Saturday that is destined to test the limits of the 2p2 forum server performance; Deeb titled it -> \”Sorel allegedly bottom dealing vs john racener.\” Deeb posted this bombshell on behalf of John Racener, asserting that Sorel Mizzi bottom-dealt a joker during a headsup Chinese Poker match in Racener\’s room at the PCA. This is directly from his post:
\”So sorel and John during pca were doing lots of gambling towards the end of the trip sorel says lets play chinese and says we should also play with a joker. They also did some weird scoring when whoever won most pts/hands every 10 hands the winner gets 5k, sorel had tried to bump up the stakes a few times as well to might higher. So they are rotating the deal and the dealer gets the 14th card in 1 of their hands.
Racener has played a ton of live poker so he tends to know procedure and what to look for. He notices sorels shuffling is leaving the 2 bottom cards in place they haven\’t moved from the deck. As he starts to deal he notices the first card he deals himself is the bottom card of the deck. He keeps watching sorel and once he\’s done dealing john says hes going take the hand with 14 cards in it sorel goes into a tantrum saying it\’s his hand his deal.
John says I know what you were doing picks up the 14 card pile and shows the bottom card which is the joker. He tells sorel he\’s not paying him whatever amount hes down 5-20k and that he\’s a scumbag etc.\”
Sorel (\”Imper1um\”), who just recently got his FTP account \”unbanned\” after a multi-accounting inquiry, posted a response to the accusation on page 20 of Deeb\’s thread, and gives this version of the story:
\”We were doing random 50:50 flips and playing Chinese poker freezeouts (whoever was up after 10 hands wins 5k-10k, i think?) with 2 jokers where we would both deal a deck and we take turns having a hand with 14 cards (and get to discard one). I was up 3-1 (effectively 10k) in the Chinese game. Since we didn\’t know each other that well we agreed it would be best to settle after every game so we both had chips and cash.
The current game we were playing was for 10k, he had finished setting both of his hands and looked back at the first hand he had set to change it. It\’s def against the rules in criss-cross Chinese so I told him it wasn\’t allowed. His reaction was super defensive and sensitive, I didn\’t think what he did was that big a deal but I just thought I\’d point it out to him because most people I play Chinese with know it\’s a nono simply because you can set your first hand better with knowledge of what you had in your second hand.
A few hands later he stopped me after the deal and told me that he wanted my 14 card hand. I told him he couldn\’t because it was my turn to have the 14 card hand. He grabbed the hand and freaked out when he saw that the joker was around the bottom of the deck (3-6 cards in not first bottom card like Shaun reports). He started going off on how he saw me deal the joker from the bottom of the deck. I yelled back and him and told him he was wrong blah blah blah. Went on for about 5 minutes and then John decided to quit in the middle of our 10k game with me up around 15-20 points after 4-5 hands and demanded I paid him back all the money I won from the trip from all the other stuff we bet on.\”
Marco Valerio of QuadJacks.com released an audio interview early this morning where Racener goes fully on-on-on record, verifying all of what Deeb said. This – worth a listen, folks.
In the audio, Racener claims that Sorel attempted to get him drunk at a nightclub before making a move to cheat him. He states Sorel offered him percentage of tourney action to keep quiet, tried to blame a prescription drug problem as an excuse for the alleged incident, \”cryingly\” (?) begged via multiple phone calls and now-deleted texts to not mention it, and said finally he might kill himself if this incident surfaced. Racener relays that although he would have normally \”cold-cocked him (Sorel) right upside the head\”, he thought it safer to get away from him in the moment given the scenario.
Racener says he plans on posting a statement himself on the 2p2 within the next 24 hours, after creating an account in order to relate his story personally.